Review Detail

THE SECRET LIFE OF BUGS features lovely illustrations to teach a bit about bugs. The book includes a couple pages on a few different insects, such as bees, ants, stick insects, and butterflies. Each bug gets a couple page spreads with die-cut peek-through features and a couple paragraphs with random information about them.

What I loved: The illustrations in this book were full of color and details on each page, and the cut-outs were quite elegant. The information included gives some basics about each insect described, but the focus is definitely on the imagery.

What left me wanting more: The die-cuts were very small, which made the pages quite delicate. They were really easy to tear, even for gentle readers. The font was also really small and hard to read so as to be unobtrusive to the imagery, but this made it a tough book to read. Some of the descriptions and images may not work well for sensitive readers, such as the discussion of the spider and its grasshopper prey. There is also an image of mating damselflies, which is not discussed, but children will notice it because it stands out a bit. The text also does not flow smoothly, as it does not really create a story or include a lot of consistent/basic facts for the bug types. It seems to be more random information about a few different types of bugs, without leading information or anything, so it did not flow smoothly when read.

Final verdict: Overall, THE SECRET LIFE OF BUGS will work well for children who prefer to explore books visually and enjoy seeing bugs.